New plan for Gettysburg REDDI property

Stratton Street property proposed for senior housing.

The controversial REDDI property in Gettysburg is once again up for grabs. An 88-unit senior living complex has been proposed at the long-abandoned Stratton Street site.

Caldwell, Heckles and Egan Construction Inc. of Lancaster is prepared to buy the site from its property owner, ACNB, by next week and the builder hopes to begin construction in the spring of 2014. Once completed, the housing complex would be sold to the Lancaster-based developer, Community Basics Inc.

Peter Egan, the project's builder, said the project would be a boon to the borough's economy.

"The building will pay property taxes to the borough and permanent jobs will be created," he said.

Of course, that is only if the project ever sees completion. Two proposed senior living centers at the same site failed to ever even begin construction and earlier efforts to transform the site into an economic development center, complete with a community market and a plaza for concerts and gatherings, never got off the ground.

The site was first sold to the borough in 2004, which transferred ownership to the Gettysburg Economic Development Corp., which planned to finance the property with state grant money from the Regional Economic Development District Initiative. But the grant money never came and the GEDC defaulted on its $1.3 million payment, forcing ACNB to foreclose on the property.

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"We know this site has a lot of history," said Bruce Weinsteiger, architect of the proposed project, although he remained adamant that the senior center could succeed and bring new life to the blighted property.

Under the new plan, the property also would include room for a 4,000- to 6,000-square-foot commercial building on the east side of Stratton Street, but only if the builder finds that the demand is available.

"There is no guarantee of commercial development," Egan said. "We are not in the position to build commercial space without a tenant."

But even without a commercial property, there is still opportunity for economic growth within the senior-living complex itself, said Egan. The building would employ a full-time maintenance worker and property manager and Egan said he expects that all the new people living downtown would also help to boost Gettysburg's economy.

The new building will be partly financed by a $1 million state capital development grant and tax credits from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency. Like the previously proposed senior centers, the project plans to use the credits to help finance its 60 low-income units. The rest of the units will rent at the market rate.

If the developer receives the tax credits, it will be able to sell them to an investor, at an average rate of 85 cents for every dollar of credit. The developer is then able to borrow less money to fund the project and is expected to pass those savings onto low-income tenants through lowered rents. The tax credits are a way to incentivize private construction of low-income housing because it is not often a very profitable industry.

In order to obtain the funds from the PHFA tax credits, the builder and developer must prove that the project has a good funding mix, meets the community's need, and is accepted by the community, according to PHFA director of communications, Scott Elliot.

"We contacted Steve Niebler at the Office of Aging and he wrote back and said, yes there is a need," said Robin Fitzpatrick, president of the Adams County Economic Development Corp., expressing her confidence in the project's ability to meet those requirements.

However in a competitive tax-credit market, there are never any guarantees.

"We only fund about a quarter of the projects that come to us," Elliot said, "and often times it takes multiple years for a project to get funded as the applicant learns what we want."